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Special Educational Needs (Information) Bill

The guidance under ““Aiming high for disabled children”” refers to the core offer, and to clear information, the early support programme's information for parents and parent partnership services. We need to evaluate the effectiveness of the guidance that is coming into force. There may be disagreements about the best way to conduct the evaluation but we are confident that we will be able to carry it out. Local authorities must publish information about admissions arrangements, and there are choice advisers to help parents who may struggle with the admissions system. The advisers are expected to know about special needs and disability policy and provision. We want the parents of children with SEN to have access to a range of special educational provision. Last year, we published for local authorities the guidance ““Planning and developing special educational provision””, in which we advised local authorities to develop a range of provision to meet the range of children's needs. The guidance lists the environments in which SEN provision might be made, such as resourced provision and designated units in mainstream schools, special schools, including those that specialise in a particular type of need, and co-located mainstream and special schools. The guidance also makes it clear that parents and families should be provided with good information as and when they need it on the range of SEN provision in the area through local parent partnership services and other routes. They should also be given good information about their child's progress and the plans and interventions used to address their learning and other difficulties. Local authorities are obliged to send information to the parents of children who have been statemented to help them decide at which school they want their child educated. The parents of children with statements of special educational needs can express a preference for a school when their child is being statemented or when an existing statement is being amended. When they receive a proposed statement the name of the school their child will attend must be left blank. They must be provided with a list of all primary or secondary schools, as appropriate, in their area, and they have a right to request maintained schools in other local authority areas, too. They must also be given a list of independent and non-maintained special schools, whether in their area or not, to help them choose which school they would like named on the statement. There is already an onus on local authorities to provide information to parents about the special educational provision that is available, which is in line with the intention behind the new clause. However, the effect of the proposal does not meet the intention that a local authority should publish information on special educational provision. Section 332A of the Education Act 1996, which the new clause would amend, was incorporated in that Act by the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 to ensure that all local authorities make parent partnership services available to the parents of children in their area with special educational needs. In effect, the provision in the new clause that is intended to make local authorities provide information on the range of SEN provision will actually make parent partnership services give such information to parents whether or not they have asked about the availability of such provision. For example, the parent whose child does not have a statement and who is happy with the school their child attends might seek advice about the provision being made for their child. The local authority, via parent partnership services, would be compelled to provide information about the range of school provision in their region. The second part of the new clause, which refers to annual publication of information under subsection (1) of section 332A of the 1996 Act, would in effect oblige local authorities to publish annually all the information given to parents by the local parent partnership services, including information on the range of school provision. Although I understand the rhetorical point that the hon. Member for Basingstoke was making about the fact that we should always be conscious of the burden on parents and young people with special educational needs, I do not apologise in the least for not wanting to impose considerable burdens on local authorities with no clear benefit to those children. It would be of no use and would divert resources from alleviating the burden, which, as the hon. Lady rightly said, should be first in our minds. The proposal would place a considerable burden on local authorities without any clear benefit to children with special educational needs or their parents. Some of our discussions in Committee echoed some of the comments made this morning about the quality of parent partnership services and the impartiality of the advice they give. The hon. Lady referred to that in her remarks. Parent partnership services are meant to give parents impartial advice about special educational needs. The SEN code of practice gives statutory guidance about the services, including minimum standards. In 2006, we published an evaluation of the parent partnership services, which found that there were areas of good practice and supported previous reports in finding that the services are valued by most parents. However, it also found that there were wide variations between services due to organisational arrangements, staffing and resources. As the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole said, some parents feel that parent partnership services do not provide impartial advice. That is why, last year, we published an exemplification of those minimum standards set out in the SEN code of practice for the services and the local authorities to emphasise the need for services to demonstrate their impartiality. We expect parent partnership services to provide full information to parents. The minimum standards set out in the code state that services should provide information on the ““wide range of options”” that are available for their children's education. Guidance is also published in the special educational needs toolkit on parent partnership services, which advises the services to promote the sharing of information between parents, schools and local authorities. The exemplification of the SEN code's minimum standards makes it clear that the parent partnership services have a published policy on how they act impartially and provide a comprehensive and balanced range of information for parents. So I hope that, in the light of what I have said about the duties and guidance that encourage local authorities to publish information on SEN and about the effect of the new clause, the hon. Lady will feel able to withdraw the motion when the moment arrives.